The men on the picket line dug holes or trenches to protect themselves and could only be relieved at night under the cover of darkness. All day long they would lie there in the broiling sun with little food or water, and between the lines were dead men and horses which polluted the atmosphere. Some of the wounded from the fight of the 3d were on the field up to the 7th, completely covered by the fire of the enemy’s pickets and sharpshooters, although the men made heroic efforts every night to bring their comrades in.
“Let us bury our dead: Since we may not of vantage or victory prate; And our army, so grand in the onslaught of late, All crippled has shrunk to its trenches instead, For the carnage was great; Let us bury our dead.”
“Haste and bury our dead! No time for revolving of right and of wrong; We must venture our souls with the rest of the throng; And our God must be judge, as He sits over head, Of the weak and the strong, While we bury our dead.”
Gen. Grant made overtures to Lee the 5th for a truce, but no cessation of hostilities took place until the evening of the 7th, the hours being from 6 to 8.
The dead were buried where they fell and, strange as it may seem, quite a few men were found alive after lying there about four days without any food or water except what they may have had when wounded.
The case of a man I assisted in bringing in our lines who had five wounds on his body was a sad one, but the surgeons thought his life could be saved.
I wish I might find words to portray to the reader something of the impressiveness of the scene at Cold Harbor that night.
Imagine, if you can, two mighty armies--that for weeks had been grappling with each other in deadly contest, each doing its utmost to slay and destroy the other, laying aside their implements of war as the day draws to a close, and with the sun casting its last red glare over all, as out from the ranks on either side came the men of war on their errand of mercy; the blue and gray intermingling, looking for friends and comrades that had fallen; permitted to carry them back into their own ranks to live or die among those with whom they served.
The picture will never be effaced from my memory, and all who witnessed that or a similar scene, will heartily endorse the saying of the late General Sherman that “War is hell.”